The study uses longitudinal data from the High School and Beyond Survey and the National Education Longitudinal Study to sort out empirically several competing influences of immigrant status, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on educational achievement, labor force participation, transitions to independent living and family formation. The data allow for a unique investigation studying, simultaneously and longitudinally, the relative strength of factors, such as ethnicity, immigrant status, and language proficiency when controlling for family background, attitudes, and the sequence of previous life-course events. The analysis focuses not only on the initial effect of generation status but incorporates a dynamic life-course framework to investigate the impact of generation status on the trajectories experienced over several transitions. The long-term view afforded by this longitudinal approach to the study of immigrant adaptation may aid the development of both immigration policy and domestic policies affecting immigrants.